As marketers, perhaps our first and most important responsibility is helping our audiences solve problems. What I appreciate most about Nashville and the healthcare industry here is the spirit of collaboration that exists to tackle problems together across competitive divides.

When I came to Nashville 21 years ago, I was hired as a healthcare reporter. Most industries take some time to learn, but the complexity of healthcare was overwhelming. I went back to school at night to get an MBA just so I could learn more—not necessarily all of the answers, but at least most of the questions.

At the same time I started as a reporter, Laura Campbell was launching the Nashville Health Care Council, an organization that has matured into an association of healthcare organizations and vendors that creates conversation around critical issues to our local industry and the delivery of healthcare nationwide. In addition, the Nashville Health Care Council launched Leadership Healthcare to create the next-generation of healthcare leaders.

These groups bring together people who compete against one another professionally to discuss common problems larger than themselves. After 20 years working in healthcare content marketing, I appreciate the desire to solve these problems in collaboration more than ever.

Recently, Nashville’s collaborative healthcare community has started tackling the issue of interoperability. This morning, I toured the new Center for Medical Interoperability, and I heard how providers in our city, who make up more than 50 percent of the medical procurement spend nationwide, are trying to address the problem of how devices in clinical settings can share data to improve care—data liquidity is what the experts call it. This effort is a big swing at the plate and aiming to reduce $30 billion in cost.

Both efforts are aiming to solve a big problem in our system: the way data is siloed at the device level and at the level of patient information stored in electronic medical records (EMRs). All these efforts deserve our attention as marketers. We are in an industry that has fundamental challenges that other industries have already addressed. Marketing means solving the problems with others when we can.

Image Credit | iStock

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